Verdict is in: Judge Judy reveals the ‘deadly’ habit she’s avoided during 46-year marriage
The verdict is in.
Judge Judy Sheindlin and her husband, Jerry Sheindlin, have kept their 46-year marriage alive by doing two simple things.
“You don’t spend 24 hours together,” Judy, 81, recently told E! News. “Because that’s deadly.”
The courtroom TV star also stressed that partners should make sure that their partners still find them attractive.
“Jerry just celebrated his 90th birthday,” she told the outlet. “And I still like to look at him when he walks in the room — that’s a key.”
This is not the first time that she’s offered advice to other couples.
In 2021, the Emmy Award-winning judge told People that staying fit is essential too.
“We’re both very surface people when it comes to that,” the “Judy Justice” star explained at the time. “You know if you fall instantaneously for somebody that means there’s a physical attraction. And people age, people they change, you can either do it gracefully or you can say ‘I give up.'”
“And I, for myself, I said ‘I choose to not give up, I choose to stay fit.’ So don’t even think about anything but staying, looking as good as you can possibly look at this stage in your life,” she added. “I don’t have to tell him that more than once, he loves himself desperately.”
The couple, who got married in 1977 and share five children from both of their previous marriages, reportedly met one night at a bar while they were both attorneys.
“I just finished trying a murder case as a defense lawyer,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 1999. “She was a prosecutor. There was a reporter from the New York Post there at the bar, and I was speaking to him about the case.”
“Judy came walking in and put her finger in my face and said, ‘And who is this?’ I said, ‘Lady, get your finger out of my face.’ We’ve been together ever since,” he laughed.
The couple briefly divorced in 1990, but they remarried the following year after both of them expressed how much they missed each other.
“I missed her presence the very first week that we were separated,” Jerry recalled in the book, “What Makes a Marriage Last: 40 Celebrated Couples Share with Us the Secrets to a Happy Life.”
“It was the first time in years that we didn’t get to see each other every single day,” he said, adding that “it was such a strange experience.”
“I like being married,” Judy added. “I missed him.”
Following their reunion, Jerry presided over the long-running show “The People’s Court” for two seasons.
“She is the one who told me I should do it,” he told the LA Times. “If she had any reservations at all, I wouldn’t have done it.”
“I think that behind every great woman, there is a man,” he went on. “So I may be behind her now, but I also heard a rumor that behind every great man, there is a woman. So we’ll have to wait and see how it plays out.”